Lazy Day in Dogville

The monster under my computer desk

I just had the silliest experience, but for a tiny moment I was frightened enough that a chill ran down my spine.

Since I finished my last post, I've been sitting at the computer doing "next blog" searches for something interesting to read. I'd been at it a while when I shifted in my chair, and all of a sudden, my mouse jerked away from me. I grabbed it and held on tightly to keep it from being pulled off the backside of the keyboard tray, but it seemed as if it had come to life and was fighting against my hand. I rolled back in my chair, trying to look under the desk, but the struggle kept getting worse and worse. Finally, I spotted the "culprit." Apparently, while I'd had my legs stretched out under the desk earlier, the mouse cord had become entangled in the buckle on my sandal, so the farther I moved the chair back, the harder the mouse "fought" to move in the opposite direction.

Whew! Now I feel better.

Seduction gone wrong

This morning I was catching up on reading other blogs I enjoy, one of which is Mandajuice. In her post for April 18, 2006, she included a list of things her husband does that annoy her. The whole list was funny, but when I hit No. 13, a memory popped into my head that sent me into a fit of giggles.

In 1971, we were about halfway through what would turn out to be an 18-month stint of living in Miami, Florida. My husband worked second shift at the Turkey Point nuclear power plant. We'd only been married two years at that time, so the romance was still in full bloom, and I made it a point to be awake every night when he got home from work about one a.m. Even though he ate supper at the plant, I always cooked some kind of hot snack for him when he came home and sat with him so he could relax and unwind before going to bed. My daughters were in elementary school and were always sound asleep at that time of night.

On the day that Mandajuice's post reminded me of, I'd been shopping and had made an impulse purchase of some brightly colored, sheer, sexy lingerie. In those days I was slim and trim and comfortable showing skin, so I planned to make a grand entrance and surprise my husband that night.

The magic hour arrived, and I, wrapped in my bathrobe (which covered up the new undies), greeted my husband with a hug and a kiss, fixed him a drink and a plate of something good, and settled him onto the sofa to watch "The Dick Cavett Show," another part of our routine. I waited until he had almost finished eating, then excused myself and went into the bathroom. I gave my hair and makeup a quick, final inspection, practiced my come-hither pout in the mirror, then tossed off the robe and began slinking seductively back into the living room, one hand on my hip in my best runway-model manner. I had big plans that night.

What I didn't know was that in the couple of minutes I'd been in the bathroom, my husband had taken off his big, clunky workboots and left them sitting right in front of the sofa. As I rounded the corner into the living room, he looked up and smiled in delight, and I gave him my sexiest smile right back. Maintaining "full-of-promises" eye contact, I moved towards him with my arms outstretched...and tripped over his boots, took three giant steps, and leaped over the coffee table.

I don't even remember what happened after that.

Reincarnation?

My granddaughter said something really funny when she was little, but I've been hesitant to write about it because I didn't want to even peripherally perpetuate a stereotype. But it was funny, no hidden meaning was intended, and Mike broke the ice on his hilarious blog, so I'm gonna go for it.

I was taking my granddaughter to my house for the weekend. She was three years old, strapped in her carseat in the back of my car, and we were stopped at the drive-thru window of a Popeye's fried chicken restaurant. The Popeye's lady took our order and closed her window, and my granddaughter piped up, "I used to wook daow."

"You did?" I asked. "You used to work there?"

"Mmm-hmm," she said matter-of-factly. "Dat's when I was black."

Gal, Friday

That's me, today. And it's been a pretty good day.

My boss is a fisherman first and a lawyer second. Today he and his wife were in Grand Isle buying a new fishing camp (to replace the one Hurricane Katrina blew away), so I had the office all to myself. I love that once in a while. I wore my comfy old jeans and a T-shirt, the phones were quiet, and I used the day to rearrange furniture and "reclaim my desk."

I'd swear that the minute I turn out the lights and lock the door each afternoon, the documents on my desk are all over each other, mating and reproducing like rabbits. Sometimes they get piled so high I almost have to raise my chair to work on top of the stack. Today I moved an extra table into my work area and stacked a bookcase on top of it, which gives me extra storage and plenty of elbow room--for now, at least.

We were supposed to have thunderstorms (or "thunderthorms" as the automated weather voice says), but all the angry clouds could muster up was about 15 minutes' worth, and the rest of the day was gorgeous.

The cherry on top of my delicious day was a package from a long-lost, recently found cousin. She sent pictures of grandparents and great-grandparents on my father's side of the family, some of them faces I never expected to see, and I was moved to happy tears.

In fact, I was so excited to get these pictures that it made me stop for a minute and reflect on the fact that my thrills are much, much quieter and gentler these days than they used to be. What does it say about me that my idea of a sensual experience is driving on new, smooth blacktop? And getting new pictures of the dearly departed??? OOOoooohhhhHHHH, maaaannnnn!!

Ace Young was getting old...

...so he had to go. Sorry for any of you who watched American Idol just so you could see him, but if you're being honest with yourself, don't you think a nice still photo of Ace would be an improvement somehow?

Tuesday night's show was outstanding--the best ever--but I'm worried about next week. I could listen to Andrea Bocelli sing for hours and hours, but I'm concerned that two weeks in a row of love songs will put Chris Daughtry in danger. He did a wonderful job on Tuesday and still ended up in the bottom three. And can you imagine Taylor Hicks, who absodamnlutely nailed it this week, singing anything that Andrea Bocelli would choose for him? It'll be interesting!

(If you've read this post, you may have figured out that I treat my blog exactly the way I treat my body: Sometimes I feed it something of substance, and sometimes I just stuff in some junk food and call that good enough. Sorry!)

The Old Step Stone

This lady was my great grandmother. I don't know very much about her and, what's worse, I waited too late to ask. I know she had six children, all of whom lived relatively long lives and all of whom have been gone for many years. From U.S. Census records, I know she was born in Missouri about 1856 and was still living in 1930. And I know one more thing: At least once in her life, she used poetry to express her emotions.

She wrote this poem when she was 41 years old, three years before her husband died. She lived at least 33 more years after she wrote these words:


A POEM OF OLD FAIRVIEW
The Old Stepstone

As the south wind sighs thro. the leafy boughs
And the whipporwill calls to her mate
And the moonlight silvers the sleeping scene
I lift the latch of the gate.

I go thro. the shadowy path of the house
That once was my dear old home
And as the redbird stirs in her leafy nest
I pause at the old step stone.

But what means this silence the house is all dark
No dear familiar form
Comes with a smile to greet me now
Oh, where can they all have gone.

I enter & go from room to room
I call, and call again
But the echo is all that comes back to me now
For I listen and call in vain.

Loves instinct leads me further on
Where marble slabs gleam in the night.
And I wander about midst the tall green grass
Beneath the moons pale light.

Till at length I pause by a sod grown mound
Bedecked with the midnight dew
Ah! this solves the mystery for me at last.
This tells a tale so true.

Tells why I'm left here all alone
Adrift on the ocean of time.
The death angel beckoned, he answered the call
The call of the master divine.

And thats why the old homes dark tonight
Why Mother and all are gone.
Ah! the birds sing sweetly & the sun shines bright
But I'm left sad and alone.

Ah well! in that haven of infinite rest
We are gathering one by one.
May the family circle be all complete
When earths trials & troubles are done.

By Lida N. Saunders

Nov. 12th 1897 God Knows Best
Otterville, MO

I'm tellin'!

This photo was taken in the summer of 1950. I'm the girl on the left, the one with the stupid hat and the really dirty feet. The small girl on the right is my little sister. The dog, named Wiggles, was ours. That leaves the older girl in the middle, and she's the one I want to talk about.



The girl in the middle lived six houses up the street--not down the street, toward the drugstore/soda fountain, but the other direction. She was enough older than we were that she wasn't a frequent playmate, but I remember her quite clearly.

She looks a little bit like Laura Ingalls in this picture. In truth, she was our Nellie Oleson. We played with her when she wanted to play, and we played what she wanted to play. She struck fear in our hearts until the day she moved away.

This photo was taken on our front steps, but on the day that sticks out in my mind, she and I were playing on the back steps. She sat a couple of steps higher than I did, and at one point she picked up her big foot in its sturdy leather sandal and stomped it down on my fingers--on purpose! I started crying and stood up to go in the house, and that's when she grabbed me by my collar, got right in my face, and said, "You'd better sit back down if you know what's good for you, and if you ever tell anybody about this, I'll do it again!"

Well, guess what, Miss Priss: I'm tellin'! Brave soul that I am, it's only taken me 56 years to get up the courage to spill the beans about your dirty little, dark-sided secret, but today's the day the truth comes out!

Yes, I remember her well. If you ask me, I'll whisper her name to you. I won't write it here, though, in case she's still the meanest girl on the block.

P.S. to my little sister: I learned a lot from that girl.

Eggcellent answer!

Easter seems like a good time for an egg story, so I'll tell one that's related to the beautiful egg pictured here. My stepson, a talented artist, carved this egg from a block of plaster of Paris, then painted it, when he was 16 years old. I've always loved it and kept it prominently displayed in my home.

Sometime in the early 80s, my mother, my sister, and my two nieces came from Texas to Baton Rouge to visit me. I'm not by nature a neat person, but when you have advance notice that your mother is coming, you're obligated to clean until everything's spotless.

As we visited around the dining room table, my younger niece, who was about 5 or 6 at the time, picked up a deck of cards and began playing with them. After a while, she started absent-mindedly folding down the corners of the cards, and that's when my mom stopped her. Mother pulled the little one onto her lap and said, "Don't mess up Aunt [Velvet's] cards. Don't you see how nice her apartment is and how well she takes care of her things?"

My niece was embarrassed and a little angry at being corrected. She ducked her head, tucked her chin tightly into her chest, and looked out the corner of her eye as she responded in a barely audible voice, "Mmm-hmm. Except for that egg."

Happy Easter...resurrecting memories

This photo of my brother and his playmate was taken at Easter time 45 years ago. Seems like yesterday. He called last night and e-mailed me pictures of his own son, who's growing faster than I can believe, and it was so good to talk with him for a few minutes.

I was 15 when he was born, not a happy teen, and he brought joy to our household. The one thing all of us had in common was our love of that baby boy.

When I was 18, days after my brother turned three years old, I married and moved out of town. I had grown up in a home with no father, but with grandparents who made it a peaceful, happy place to live, and I wanted that kind of loving environment for him. For years and years, I felt guilty about abandoning that small boy to parents whose machine-gun bickering nearly drove me insane.

I was in my 50s before I realized that the bickering was simply a communication style that my mother and stepfather somehow fell into early on, not a measure of their love for one another. They were married almost 39 years, until my stepfather's death, and I didn't understand until after he was gone how much my mother had loved him.

My brother, you'll be pleased to know, seems to have turned out just fine. We've lived in different states for the past 35 years, so I don't see him often, but each time I do see him or talk to him, I'm struck by his intelligence and his sense of humor. He has a terrific wife, and their son brings them the same kind of joy that my baby brother brought to us.

To them, to my wonderful sister and her family in Texas, to my California siblings and their lovely mom, to the long-lost family members I've recently found again, and especially to my daughters, my son-in-law and my grandchildren--in fact, to all of you who read this--I wish you all the love, beauty, and happiness that are held in the promise of Springtime.

Trying to photograph Lucy...

Lucy? Lucy, come here, girl!

Lucy, that's good. Stay, Lucy!
Hey, where'd she go?
Ohhh, here's Lucy!

Feeding my spirit

Much like the tortoise who only comes out of his shell to meet his basic needs for food, water and, once in a while,
the companionship of other tortoises, I am an introvert. By the middle of the work week, I literally ache for solitude and serenity, and I'm enormously grateful to come home and find it.

Work was fast-paced and hectic today. Any feelings of accomplishment I might have enjoyed on another day were overshadowed by the bruising and battering of unnecessary chatter and the noise of office machines, ringing phones, and traffic.

It's comforting, when I feel like this, to spend some time with Max Ehrmann's Desiderata, which is about as close to a religion as I have. My first exposure to this poem was at my daughter's sixth-grade graduation, when her whole class recited it. It's framed in my home and ingrained in my heart.

As I read about going "placidly amid the noise and haste," I feel myself getting calmer, and by the time I read for the thousandth time that I am "a child of the universe," I feel relaxed, at peace.

Certain music also soothes my frayed nerves, especially "A Whiter Shade of Pale," which is my all-time favorite song. Can you imagine my joy, then, as I Googled to find you a Desiderata link and found THIS?

That, my friends, is nourishment!

What do you mean I'm not detail oriented?

In a recent conversation where stories were being shared on the topic of "Really Stupid Things I've Done," one of mine had to do with wearing mismatched shoes--not once, but four--count 'em, four--different times in my life. I blame this on two habits in particular:

1. If I find a "triple-threat" shoe, i.e. comfortable, attractive, and affordable, I usually buy it in several colors.

2. At the end of the day, I'm inclined to kick my shoes off into a little pile rather than line them up neatly on the shoe-organizer shelves in my closet.

The first time I wore mismatched shoes was in 1972, when I hurriedly pulled on knee-high go-go boots, one black and one brown, and wore them to the grocery store. This was in a tiny town in Georgia, and my sweet neighbor, bless her heart, said not to worry about it, that anybody who'd noticed would be wantin' to get a pair just like 'em.

The second time involved high-heeled pumps, both black, one with a subtle leaf design on the toe and one plain, and one with a heel that was a half-inch higher than the other. I wore those shoes to work, and I remember that for the first hour or so of that day, one foot was sort of dragging when I walked.

The third time, I wore one black loafer and one navy blue one, identical except for the color, and didn't notice it until well after I got back from running errands on my lunch hour.

You'd think there couldn't be a worst-case scenario involving mismatched shoes, but on the fourth occasion, I managed to top the first three. That time, too, it was one black shoe and one navy blue one, and I remember thinking as I drove to work that the shoe on my right foot was painful. I couldn't imagine why, since I wore those shoes frequently and they were well broken in. By the time I got to work, I was too busy to pay attention to it. Once more, hours passed before I noticed I was wearing shoes of different colors. It was while I was slapping my forehead and laughing about how I couldn't believe I'd done it again that I noticed one more thing: Both the black one and the blue one were left shoes.

Catching up

On Friday, the phone was ringing when I walked in the door from work. My daughter was calling to tell me she was leaving to take Winston and Lucy to the vet, so I went with her to help her handle the two wiggly pups. Lucy had been vomiting occasionally since last weekend, but every time my daughter thought about taking her to the vet, she’d seem to get over it. She was eating well and her behavior was normal. When she threw up on Friday afternoon, Winston immediately did, too. That was the second time that had happened.

All their tests were normal, so the vet asked about their environment: “Anything different in the backyard?” In unison, my daughter and I responded, “Caterpillars!”



Lucy’s motto is “eat first and ask questions later,” and we’ve been inundated with forest tent caterpillars for the past week or so. We’re also seeing a few buck moth caterpillars, the fuzzy black ones that sting like a sonofabitch. The vet said he’s seeing a ton of small pets whose stomachs are upset by the acid inside the tasty little caterpillars, and he’s pretty sure that’s what’s going on with Lucy. We can’t figure out if Winston has been eating them, too, or if he’s just barfing because it grosses him out when Lucy does.


Saturday was a gorgeous, windy day and we decided to go back to the zoo to take pictures of all the things we missed on our last trip. It was a successful trip from a photography standpoint, and I’ll share more photos later in the week.

I was totally wiped out by the time we got home, so I ordered pizza and buffalo wings from Domino’s (couldn’t make up my mind, and I like leftovers) and spent the rest of the evening with my feet propped up. I read until midnight to finish Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner, the latest in her series of fun reads.

That brings us to today: Sunday. The Sunday newspaper here is big enough that it’s usually divided into two plastic bags that are both thrown at the end of my driveway. When I went out to get it this morning, somebody had very kindly picked it up and placed it right by my door–-except only one bag was there, so I got most of the news but none of the ads that I look forward to seeing. This hasn’t happened before, so I don’t know who to thank for this “favor.” Grrrrr.

I’ve spent the rest of the day scanning photos from my “pre-1940" file and looking for clues to identify people, places and dates. I'm hoping to get every photo I own scanned in the near future, and it's turning out to be quite a project.

Now it’s mid-afternoon and I still haven’t had lunch, so I’m gonna stop to eat some pizza. There's laundry to do for a few hours, then I’ll end the day with my usual weekend grand finale: Grey’s Anatomy. Good show! If you don't already watch it, check it out.

Muzzleman

I've posted a lot about my dogs, but I've never mentioned another strange little creature who lives in my home. I've been trying for a while now to get a picture of him to show you.


He's so cute and funny looking. I love to hold him, and when I do, he makes the silliest faces, and his big tongue snakes out and tries to lick my hand.


Sometimes, though, Butch just won't sit still long enough for me to play with Muzzleman.

The car wash blues

One thing I always include on my gratitude list is a healthy sense of humor. Some people might think I'm too easily amused, but I choose to think of it more as a deep and profound appreciation of the absurd. And today I saw an example of the kind of absurdity that cracks me up.

My boss invited me to lunch, something we rarely do, and we went in his pickup truck. As I climbed up into the cab, he apologized for the condition of the truck, which he'd used over the weekend to go turkey hunting in Mississippi. He had a pile of "necessities" in the middle of the front seat, and the outside of the truck had quite a bit of mud on it. Since I'm not a neat freak, none of that particularly bothered me.

We had a delicious lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and on the way back to the office, he asked if I'd mind if he ran his truck through an automatic car wash. Fine with me. He got his ticket and we waited in line until it was our turn. As the water coursed over the truck and the foamy soap covered all the windows, we laughed about how the movement of the car wash mechanism makes you feel as if your vehicle is rolling. As the rinse water rained down on us, we chatted about all sorts of other mundane stuff. What we didn't talk about or even think about was the pile of leaves, twigs and other debris that Nature had deposited in the bed of his pickup truck as it was parked at the hunting camp. And then the high-powered blow dryer kicked in.

All of a sudden, it looked like we were sitting in the midst of a whirlwind. For two or three minutes, leaves and twigs and clumps of wet dirt were picked up out of the truck bed, twirled around high in the air, and, as we watched in amazement, plastered right back against the freshly washed truck.

What a good laugh!

For Patsy

Patsy of My Life and Times posted earlier today that her beloved pet, Penny, had been hit by a car and killed. I don't know how to leave a link in the comments section of her blog, but I wanted to send her this poem about the Rainbow Bridge. Someone sent this link to my daughter when her little Frankie died, and it comforted all of us.

Little brown socks

I've recently had the pleasure of exchanging e-mails with a first cousin whom I hadn't heard from in about 49 years. Of all the cousins on my dad's side, she's the one closest in age to me, and I remember how much fun we had playing together as children, before my family moved out of state.

One of the things my cousin mentioned in her e-mail is how tall and slim I used to be. "Skinny" is a more accurate word. I reached my full height at age 12, and it took about four more years for me to fill out enough to catch up with it. In this photo, I'm the tall girl with the long, twiglike arm, 14 years old, halfway through the filling out process, and on my first ever trip to the beach.

Anyway, discussing my formerly skinny self made me think of one of my most embarrassing moments, which happened at the swimming pool at Fassnight Park in Springfield, Missouri, the summer I was 12. Because of the recent growth spurt I'd had, my old bathing suit didn't fit anymore, so Mother suggested I wear one of hers. It was a pretty, shrimp-pink suit, and it fit well except in the chest area. In that area, it puckered and made my lack of anything resembling breasts all the more obvious.

I was embarrassed to go to the pool like that, so at the last minute I reached into my sock drawer, pulled out a pair of little brown anklets, and tucked one neatly folded sock in each side of the bathing suit top. Turning from side to side in front of the mirror, I satisfied myself that the socks weren't detectable, then threw a blouse on over the bathing suit so Mother wouldn't notice what I had done.

I should also mention that I never really learned to swim. My swimming pool activity basically consisted of entering the pool at the shallow end and staying cool by walking leisurely toward the rope that marked the beginning of the deep end, then going back and forth until it was time to go home.

On that day, I made one trip to the rope, where the water was up to my neck, then turned around and started back. When the water level was about at my waist, I glanced down and nearly died as I saw two dark blobs splashed randomly on my abdomen, shining like beacons through the wet (and now semi-transparent) pink bathing suit. I crossed my arms over my belly, whirled around and walked as fast as I could back to the rope, then leaned into the side of the pool, hunched over, and fished out the socks.

I probably should have dropped the socks on the spot, but instead, I wadded them up, one in each fist, and carried them under the water for a few minutes while I tried to decide what to do. Fortunately, a woman who had been sitting on a towel right at the edge of the pool chose that moment to get in the water, and as she moved away from the poolside, I made a beeline for it and stuffed my socks under her towel. I still remember watching her later as she picked up the towel, looked around in confusion, and said to nobody in particular, "Heh-heh, looks like somebody lost their socks."

For the rest of the afternoon, I sat on the bottom of the pool at a corner of the shallow end, longing to go home, and very grateful that all the little-bitty kids crowded into that end of the pool wouldn't pay attention to my puckered bathing suit top.

All that and a bag of popcorn

About once a month, my older daughter and I have a movie night sleepover, and last night was it. She picked up the movies, the hot wings, her dogs and her jammies, and I got off work a couple of hours early, so we were able to pull off a triple-feature moviethon and still get to sleep at a decent hour.

We couldn’t wait to see Memoirs of a Geisha because we both loved the book, so we watched it first. The beautiful Japanese scenery and costumes, along with a simple love story, might have been fine for someone who didn’t expect more than that, but we were both disappointed. The book was so rich and substantive, the characters so well detailed, that we couldn’t read it fast enough and then hated for it to end. The movie, on the other hand, seemed to drag on way too long. So, two thumbs up for the book, two thumbs down for the movie.

We didn’t have any preconceived ideas about the other two films, so we used the “hold-‘em-behind-your-back-and-shuffle-‘em-back-and-forth” method of choosing which one to watch next. The winner was
Good Night, and Good Luck. This was a much better movie, and it was interesting, not to mention enlightening, to see the parallels between 1950s government thinking and what’s happening in this country today. Kinda scary until you stop and think that we survived it then and got our nation back to a better place, so maybe there's hope for us yet. (We just can't vote for more of the same.)

The last–and best–movie of the evening was Capote, which was a masterpiece of a character study of the author, Truman Capote. Like faithful reader and new online friend Patsy commented recently, I, too, remember reading in the newspapers about the murders in Kansas that became the subject of Capote’s In Cold Blood. I read the book when it first came out and saw the movie, too (which starred Robert Blake before we knew how creepy he really was). What I never knew until we watched Capote was how the experience of writing that book changed his life. If you’re into action films or chick flicks, this won’t be your cup of tea, but if you can sit still and you like something thought provoking, this one will stay with you for a long, long time.

On a final note of this unsolicited movie review, I can’t say enough good things about Philip Seymour Hoffman, who starred in the role of Truman Capote. He’s been in so many movies that my daughter and I have joked about it for several years. One of us will ask, “Who’s in that movie?” and the other will answer with a list that always ends in “...and Philip Seymour Hoffman.” He hasn’t been blessed with leading-man looks, which may be why he’s had time to hone his talent in supporting actor roles, but I think he’s brilliant! It’s about time a movie came along that allowed him to shine.

Fool me twice, shame on me

When I got my new cell phone recently, I checked out all the ring tones that came with it and selected one I really, really like: the sound of chirping birds. It's a distinctive sound and very pleasant, but it isn't working out for me.

My conscious mind can't seem to get used to it. When I'm in the house and my cell phone rings, my first instinct is to peek out the window to see what kind of birds are raising such a ruckus. And when the phone rings in my car, I turn up the radio in anticipation of an old Minnie Riperton song. In either case, by the time I've identified the source of the chirping, I've missed the call.

My sub-conscious mind, on the other hand, is apparently very task oriented. Now that Spring has sprung, there are chirping birds outside my window every morning at first light. I used to find that sound so peaceful and relaxing. Now, though, my ears pick up the bird sounds and send them to my sleeping brain, and my brain kicks my butt out of bed and sends me across the room to fumble through my purse for my cell phone. By the time I wake up enough to realize--again--that my phone isn't ringing, the dogs are awake and ready to go outside, and there's no going back to bed.

And that, my friends, is for the birds.

Cyber-Scent

I was looking at this photo of wisteria and thinking how wonderful it will be someday when technological advances give us the pleasure of seeing and smelling beautiful pictures on the internet.











And then I looked at this photo of a muddy buffalo and had second thoughts. This guy was majestic, but pretty nasty.











Naw, never mind. Definitely not a good idea.

More than one way to skin a cat

Last week I posted here about the need for a device to discourage others from driving right on my tail. I knew I wasn't alone in my frustration, and sure enough, I found a kindred spirit on my drive to work yesterday morning. I stopped at a red light behind a guy who had obviously faced the tailgating problem himself and found his own creative solution. In the back of his car, clearly visible through his rear window, were four medium-sized white cardboard boxes, each labeled in large red letters: DYNAMITE. Heh heh heh! Brilliant!

Talkin' trash

On Tuesday mornings at the crack of dawn, the garbage truck rolls through my neighborhood, which means that sometime on Monday night I'll be outside taking my gigantic garbage can to the curb.

The driveway is paved and the can is on wheels, so as long as I hold on with both hands, it's fairly easy to manage--at least on the flat part of the driveway. But let me mention now that my house sits on top of a little hill. And let me add that I'm no spring chicken and that I'm overweight and out of shape. Are you getting a picture in your head? Good, then, let's go on.

Even though it was nine years ago, I remember the first time I took out the garbage after moving into this house. The can was shiny and new and so big--almost up to my armpits. Because of the recent unpacking, it was stuffed to the max, and even as big as it was, I still had one bag of trash that wouldn't fit. The loaded garbage can was heavier than I expected, too, and I remember being surprised, since it had wheels, that it took so much muscle to move.

I had the extra trash bag in one hand and was trying to push the can with the other, but it was extremely difficult to steer. After trying to push it for a few feet, I got the bright idea that it might be easier if I'd just pull it instead. I tilted it over and found I could balance the weight of it in one hand, so I picked up the extra trash bag again and fully expected to get all the garbage to the road in one trip. That approach worked just fine until I got to the hill.

I started down the slope and the garbage can began to speed up behind me. I picked up my pace a little bit to keep it from running over my heels, and it started moving faster and faster and faster, as if Mario Andretti were inside the damned thing and driving it in his last lap before the checkered flag. I went from a fast walk to a trot to a full-out, booby-bouncing, hair-blowing-in-the-wind, knees-high, escape-from-danger run, all the way down the driveway and almost into the road, finally saving myself by veering off the pavement and onto the grass.

So these days, if you're in my neighborhood on a Monday night, you might see me taking the garbage out. I'll be walking squarely behind the can, holding it tightly with both hands, taking small, slow steps in my rubber-soled shoes, and using every ounce of strength in my body to hold back the demon-racer that lives inside that can and dreams of running free.

One year older, one year wiser...both of us

My firstborn child has a birthday tomorrow, which marks one more year that I've loved her dearly and been fascinated by her creativity.

I was newly married and 18 years old when I first found out I was pregnant, and I thought taking care of a baby would be a snap. After all, I was 15 when my brother was born, so I’d had some experience caring for him, plus I had babysat throughout my teens. But when my daughter arrived six weeks early, she was so tiny that I was scared to death of her. I cried all the way through her first bath and was so grateful that my own mother was there to hold my hand and boost my confidence.

Through her whole life, this child has had to be my “experiment.” It seems it’s always a struggle for parents to decide what their children should be allowed to do and when, and we practice on our firstborns. If we’re too nervous and anxious, we stifle them, and if we’re too laid back or permissive, they pay for it in bruises or bad experiences. And this "baby bird" wanted so badly to fly--each time higher and farther--that she really kept us on our toes. What to do, what to do?

Somehow, in spite of all the mistakes we may have made, she’s turned out just fine! She's a beautiful, capable woman, and I feel honored that she still needs her mom every now and then. The neat thing is that I don't feel so much pressure when she needs me now. I know that she knows that I’m still just giving it my best shot, and she knows that I know she could handle it on her own.

Happy birthday, dream seeker! I love you.

Nothing's perfect

My last post was about how much happiness my dogs bring me, and every word was true. Even so, there's a downside to all that "puppy love."

Happy, happy, joy, joy

These are the furry creatures whose mere presence in my home fills my heart to bursting. At the top is Kadi, the Lab, the best dog ever, then Butch, the (Stevie) Wonder Dog. Kadi and Butch are mine. The granddogs are next: Winston is the Yorkie and Lucy is the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Winston and Lucy are at my house most days because my daughter's studio is in my backyard. How could anyone not love these faces?

Idol moment

This is the second straight evening in a row that I've posted about a television show, so that should give you a clue as to how exciting my life is.

Anyway, America got it right last night! Kevin Covais was eliminated from "American Idol." Nothing against Kevin, but I, for one, am glad to see him go. Kevin seems like a sweet boy. He has a pleasant (not great) voice, and he's cute, the way a little kid is cute. Buh-bye!

I wouldn't even mention this except it has bugged me for the past few weeks that Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest have repeatedly credited the "granny vote" with keeping Kevin in the competition until now. Huh? As a certified, card-carrying granny, I'd like to dispute that. I don't think it was us.

For one thing, we are not your grandfather's grannies. A large percentage of us were young women in the Sixties. Some of us went to San Francisco and wore flowers in our hair and some of us were the first to wear miniskirts to work. Even as we carried our children, some of us carried protest signs and some of us carried briefcases. Some of us burned our bras, but most of us just burned our aprons. We were all about enlightenment and honesty, and not so much about cute.

So, let me enlighten you: This granny is rooting for Chris Daughtry, Taylor Hicks, Katharine McPhee, Kellie Pickler, and Mandisa. These are the ones who could make me part with my hard-earned money to buy their music.

And let me be brutally honest: All the rest of the finalists, the ones whose names I didn't mention above, are still way better than Kevin. All except Ace Young, that is. Ace can't sing either, but if I were all about cute, he's the kind of cute I'd be all about.

Obviously, Kevin has developed a fan base, and I wish him well. My advice to him would be to have a backup plan, but if he's determined to stick with music, then I hope the demographics experts can figure out who's been voting for him and target that specific audience. All I know is it wasn't the grannies.

Calling all inventors

Have you seen the new TV series developed by the creators of "American Idol"? It's called "American Inventor," and I'm watching it with hope in my heart.

So far, they've only shown auditions, and I haven't seen anything I'm dying to own, but I'm keeping my eyes open for one product that I've been waiting for years for someone to invent. The thing I have in mind would attach to the back end of my car and, at the touch of a button, would hurl brightly colored paint pellets onto the hood of any vehicle that gets too close to my bumper.

Tailgaters drive me crazy! And in case you were wondering, I'm not one of those people who creep along way below the speed limit and force traffic to stack up behind them. After all, I am the daughter of Wanda June, yes, the Wanda June who was known on more than one occasion--in her seventies, no less--to drive like a bat out of hell in the Wal-Mart parking lot. So, no, I'm not responsible for the people who get so close I can count their freckles in my rearview mirror.

My opinion of people who drive like that is that (a) they're arrogant, pushy and too inconsiderate to care what they're doing; (b) they're sick and twisted and get an actual thrill by terrorizing people on the highway; or (c) they're too stupid to realize that their teeth will be embedded in my skull if I have to stop suddenly. In any of those cases, I think the AutoPaintLauncher would get their attention and help them to do the right thing.

I'm gonna keep watching this show. I sure hope somebody will make this for me.



Note: The Splatter graphic was borrowed from www.biblioteket.sonderborg.dk.

Maybe he'll like this one...

A long time ago my sister told me a story I’ve never forgotten. It’s her story to tell, because it's true and it happened to a friend of a friend of hers, but since my sister doesn't have a blog (yet), I'll take the liberty of passing it along to you.

I'll tell you the story with all the images I always picture in my head, because it's a visual kind of story. If Hallmark filmed it, it would make you cry. But if it were part of a Ben Stiller movie, you'd laugh out loud. So I'll just tell it, and you can choose your own reaction.

The story is very short. Imagine that you're watching it unfold on the big screen.

You see a man getting out of his car in the afternoon sunshine and walking to the front door of his home. He's a young man, no more than 40 years old. He unlocks the door and steps through it, then suddenly clutches his chest. You can see the pain on his face. He's having a heart attack, and you see him fall to the floor.

And then the scene changes. It's dark now, so you know some time has passed. The man's wife is arriving home from work. She, too, walks from her car to the house, and she notices that the door is slightly ajar. She hesitates, calls her husband's name, then pushes the door open wider so she can enter. Her hand flies to her mouth and she screams, and you know she has just discovered her husband lying right there on the floor of the foyer. The camera lingers on her face for a few seconds more, then slowly pans to the man's dead body, which is now surrounded by little dog toys.

The end.

Random acts of animal kindness

The monkeys in this photo prompted a conversation at the zoo about how cool it is to watch animals socializing and caring for one another. Immediately before this shot was taken, the monkey at the front left seated himself on the platform and began to cough. That's when the monkey you see next to him ran up beside him, leaned over, and looked him in the face, checking to make sure he was okay. You can see that the monkey on the platform above them was also showing concern.

My dogs and granddogs, though normally trying to outsmart each other to get the best treat or the best spot on the sofa, are themselves capable of showing compassion on occasion. Butch, my blind dog, was first on the scene when my daughter's little Yorkie, Winston, fell off the back of the futon and let out a frightening "EEE-YI-YI-YIIIII." Even though Butch has barely tolerated Winston in the past, he stood over him and sniffed him from one end to the other until his people came to the rescue.

Kadi, my female Lab, keeps an eye on Butch. For example, if Kadi sees that Butch is about to run into the doorframe, she'll quickly wedge her body in beside him, essentially steering him away from the doorframe and through the open door.

My younger daughter has a little inside dog, BeBe, and a big outside dog, Jez. BeBe has recently developed a routine, all on her own, that shows she's thinking and planning ahead about Jez. When the door is opened for BeBe to go outside for the first time each morning, she detours past her food dish, picks up one piece of food, then runs out the door and drops the food right in front of Jez. We're very curious about BeBe's motivation on that one. We don't know whether (a) BeBe is sharing food out of the goodness of her heart, (b) BeBe is taunting Jez by showing that she gets the premium dog food, or (c) Jez is in the mob and is making BeBe pay for protection before letting her into the yard.

For those who trust too easily

This pretty creature playing on my patio sent me digging through my file of old poems to find one I wrote back in my corporate days. The talented (but devious) co-worker who inspired it was transferred from department to department, always welcomed enthusiastically by each new supervisor, then just as eagerly passed on to the next one, until everyone was wiser and there was nowhere else for her to go.

CHAMELEON

I watch from a distance
as she changes from one color to another,
selecting with uncanny accuracy
the shade she thinks
you’ll find most appealing.

She leaps from branch to branch,
directing your attention
to the ripple of movement
she has created
in the otherwise quiet bush.

She demands,
through her stirring of the shrubbery,
that you look at her,
and she looks back through heavy-lidded eyes,
defying you to see anything
but that which she chooses to show you.

The image she presents delights you,
and it makes you vulnerable.
Predator disguised as prey,
villain as victim,
she invokes your trust
and begs your protection
from vile birds and beasts
that neither understand nor appreciate
her whimsical nature.

Her antics capture your imagination.
I know. I understand.
I, too, have watched her
frolic among the leaves,
and I’ve responded to her reptilian charm
in much the same way you do now.

Her emerald animation has enchanted you.
Such is your fascination
that you wouldn’t hear me if I spoke
nor believe my words if you heard them.
I wish I could tell you what I’ve learned.
I need to explain to you
that my spirit bears the scars
of a hundred little lizard bites.

Instead, I watch from a distance,
in silence,
as the mud-brown, scaly thing
hides behind vivid hues
and lures you ever closer.

Bad News/Good News

Bad news: It’s cold enough here that I’ve had to turn the heat on again.
Good news: At least I’m not as uncomfortable as I was during last weekend’s 90-degree zoo trip.

Bad news: The post-Katrina traffic in Baton Rouge seems to be permanent and is still unbearable.
Good news: I had green lights all the way while I ran errands today.

Bad news: My sweet tooth hasn’t been satisfied in days now.
Good news: When I got to the bank, the Girl Scouts had a cookie booth set up outside.

Bad news: The line at the bank was long.
Good news: The lady in front of me was tapping her foot, wiggling, moving her lips, struggling really hard not to burst out singing along to the piped-in music of Gladys Knight’s “Midnight Train to Georgia.”

Bad news: A pretty little three-year-old pitched a howling temper tantrum at the bank.
Good news: It made all the adults in line (strangers of all ages and colors) smile and talk to each other.

Bad news: By the time I got out of the bank, the Girl Scouts were all out of Samoas and Thin Mints.
Good news: I tried a new kind of cookie, and it did the job.

Bad news: Last weekend I got the first rock chip in the windshield of my new car.
Good news: When I walked back to my car after visiting the cookie booth, a man from a glass company was working in the parking lot. He fixed my windshield in five minutes for $20.00.

Bad news: I haven’t done any of the laundry or housecleaning I intended to do today.
Good news: I don't care.

No wonder he's in a "good humor"

As soon as I exited I-10 yesterday, with only one mile left on my drive home from work, I found myself stopped at a red light behind an ice cream truck. I couldn't hear the strains of "Red Wing", so I assumed the driver was off duty. That made sense. There's a ton of traffic in that area.

The light changed and we both turned left, and that's when I noticed that the ice cream man couldn't seem to decide which lane he wanted to be in. (Maybe it takes that kind of person to be patient all day while kids try to decide between Popsicles and Nutty Buddies.) At any rate, he finally settled in front of me again and stayed there until we both turned onto the narrow, two-lane road that leads to my street. On that road, too, there's a lot of traffic, so if the ice cream man had even attempted to peddle his wares at that moment, hands would have flown out of car windows, all of them pointed in his direction, all of them ordering just one big one.

The ice cream man must have known better, because he still didn't turn on his music, but he did slow down to a creeping, ice-cream-truck pace of 15 miles per hour. And for a solid half mile, until we turned in opposite directions, I watched his big square white truck, painted in colorful, kid-friendly signs, weave back and forth across his lane, repeatedly crossing over the yellow line on his left and narrowly missing the ditch on his right.

How could this be? This was the Ice Cream Man, that hero of my childhood. It broke my heart to think that the man who stood at that window, smiling and dispensing frozen bars of Heaven, stood on feet of clay.

More zzzzzzzzz's, please

I'm tired. Falling-asleep-before-the-end-of-a-good-show tired. Today a friend at work asked me if I've been getting enough sleep, so the dark circles under my eyes are obviously telling their gossipy tales. I know I've been going to bed too late, but it's always such a temptation to read just one more chapter before turning out the light.

It does seem to be true, though, that I don't require as much sleep as I did when I was younger. Back then, I needed a lot of sleep, and the minute things got quiet, I'd go out like a light. I never--not one time--made it all the way through a date at the drive-in movie. You can guess how that affected my popularity.

There was one funny sleep-related incident the first year I was married to my second husband. He had a good friend from high school who used to drop in with his wife and kids once a month or so. The guys would head out to the garage where they could engage in a little male bonding and car talk, and the kids would go off into my kids' bedroom to play. That left me to entertain the wife, Virginia.

Virginia was a nice person...well, okay, she was more than a little bit boring. I'm not good at small talk either, but I'd try for a while to keep a conversation going and then, without fail, I'd doze off right there in front of her. I don't know how long I'd sleep, but I'd wake up suddenly, my head jerking wildly, and be so embarrassed! I dreaded their visits. I'd try everything I could to stay awake, but it happened every single time.

And then something happened that took the pressure off. Everything was just the same right up through the part where I nodded off, but this time, when I jerked awake, I saw Virginia sitting calmly on the sofa, eating candy from a little bag and reading a book that she'd brought along for just such an occasion. She was as embarrassed as I was, but I liked the fact that she'd come prepared. It wasn't the last time I fell asleep on her, but it was the last time I worried about it.

Picture perfect weekend

What a great weekend! It included visits, phone calls and e-mail chats with some of my favorite people and a trip to one of my favorite places. In addition, my son-in-law came over on Saturday and gave my lawn its first haircut of the season. The monster dandelion is gone, the fig tree is sprouting new leaves, and the tangelo tree has tiny blossoms. All is right in my little corner of the world.

On Sunday my daughter invited me to go with her to either the zoo or the plant nursery, and I picked zoo. I loooove the zoo. When I was a kid, I used to sniff the telephone poles on our street because the smell of creosote reminded me of the monkey cages. The Baton Rouge Zoo is missing that terrific monkey/telephone-pole scent, but it more than makes up for it. It's so clean and beautiful that I'd pay to see the flowers and plants. The animals are just a wonderful bonus.

We went mid-morning and thought we'd beat the heat by going so early in the year. That didnt' happen. After a couple of hours we were both miserable and red in the face from the humidity, so we decided to cut out early and leave some animals unvisited (sorry, otters and giraffes). All day long I assumed that I must have become an even bigger wuss than I'd previously admitted to, but last night the weatherman reported that the day's high temperature was a record-breaking 90 degrees. In the middle of March? You've got to be kidding me!

Despite the heat, we had a great time. My daughter recently bought a camera just like my new one, and between the two of us we took almost 700 pictures. Last night I combined her shots and mine into one computer folder, where I oohed and aaahed while I sorted them until after midnight. Hope you enjoy these samples.


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How do you spell dessert?

My last post reminded me of a story they used to tell about my uncle Neale. The grown-ups spelled in front of him, too, apparently. One day at the dinner table, little Neale looked longingly at the pie and said, "Could I please have some K-G-Y-P-T?

Nosiness as a language tool

In high school I took one year of French. Because I’ve never had the opportunity to use it, I’ve retained very little, although I can still sing a mean first verse of “La Marsaillaise.”

A couple of years ago I invested in “Spanish for Dummies,” thinking I’d learn it so I could speak more easily with my neighbor from Columbia. But while “Spanish for Dummies” gathered dust on my shelf, my neighbor improved her English at such a rapid rate that I didn’t need Spanish anymore.

Still, I am bilingual. A second language was spoken in my home when I was very small, a language used by the adults to speak in my presence about things they didn’t want me to hear. Before I was three, I had mastered it and understood everything they said:

“Opstay erhay! Eshay isyay oloringcay onyay ethay allsway.”

“An’tcay ouyay akemay erhay utshay upyay? Eshay isyay ivingdray emay azycray.”

“Issusmay Onesjay oldtay emay atthay ethay ilkmayanmay ayedstay inyay Issusmay Ithsmay’s ousehay orfay ortyfay-ivefay inutesmay Uesdaytay.”

The grown-ups were shocked when I started speaking Pig Latin back to them. After that, they resorted to spelling all their secrets when I was around. And for that, I give belated credit to my family, who unintentionally paved the way for the eighth-grade spelling champ of Jarrett Jr. High School.

Penance

Today I took something I shouldn't have. I thought about it for awhile before succumbing to the temptation, because I knew I'd regret it. And, sure enough, I already do.

The opportunity presented itself when we closed the office early and I had the afternoon off. If not for the extra time on my hands, it never would have happened. I wouldn't have been in the right place at the right time.

I've done this kind of thing before. When it's happened in the past, I've spent the rest of the day in a fog and then followed it with a sleepless night. A night spent tossing and turning, asking myself over and over again why I did it.

It wasn't a question of need. I just wanted it, and I wanted it right then. I wanted to wrap myself in that softness and warmth and revel in the luxury of it.

I should have walked away. I should have focused my attention on finding something to do, something interesting that would occupy my time and keep my mind off of it. Instead, I let the instant-gratification-fanatic part of me take over and make the decision. And I grabbed the prize while no one was around to stop me.

If I could undo it, I would, but there's no going back on this one. I hope that by committing this lapse of judgment to writing, I won't repeat it. I'll try to remember, the next time I feel that overwhelming urge, to reread this post and recall how awful I feel at this moment. There'll be little sleep at my house tonight.

Oh...that thing I took? A three-hour nap!

Weed 'em and reap

There are one or two things I do fairly well and a whole bunch of others at which I have no skill whatsoever. Gardening, unfortunately, falls into the latter category. My daughter has put gorgeous potted plants on my patio each Spring for the past two years, and I've enjoyed them immensely even as I watched them die before their time. One year I bought a beautiful, healthy-looking ficus tree, and as I drove it home (I swear this is true), all the leaves turned black and fell off the branches.

I'm telling you this as a way to help you understand why I'd let a common dandelion grow right at my back door. I know it's a weed. I don't think it's pretty. It does not smell good. I just wanted to see how long the darned thing would continue to grow. Well, ladies and gentlemen,
ta-daaaaaaaaaaa:

One tiny piece of white dandelion fluff floated to the ground, wedged itself into the narrow crack between my patio and the concrete foundation of my house, and grew to giant beanstalk proportions. It did this all on its own, with no assistance from me. Or, I should say, no interference from me. I didn't overwater it, I didn't underwater it, I didn't do anything. It obviously got the right amount of sunlight, too, along with whatever nutrients it needed to absorb right out of the air. So, I ask you, what's the deal with the expensive nursery plants?

I've thought about planting morning glories, honeysuckles, or some other kind of vines on the neighbor's side of the fence, then just ignoring them and hoping they'll eventually grow over the top to my side. Having seen this Amazon dandelion, however, I'm a little bit afraid. It isn't too hard now to imagine being attacked by rapidly advancing morning glory tendrils that grow over my legs and strap me to my lawn chair.

Hmmmm. I'm pretty laid back. I wonder if I could learn to like dandelions if I'd give 'em half a chance.

More Comfortable Genes

This may be the only picture in existence of me with my parents, and I've spent a lot of time studying it to see which parts of me came from each of them.


The picture was on my desk while I wrote yesterday's genealogy post, and the combination of the writing and the picture caused the following poem to insinuate itself into my brain, one silly couplet at a time. It's been a long, long time since I've written a poem--much less a rhyming one--but it was fun to do and I decided to share it.

A History of Them and Me
(and How We're Linked Genetically)

My father’s sperm and mother’s egg
hooked up to make my arm, my leg,
my heart, my lungs, my chin, my knee,
and every other part of me.
My speaking voice, my pale white skin,
my lanky hair and crooked grin,
my way with words, my awkward dance
were part of my inheritance.

Before my parents there were others,
great-grandfathers, great-grandmothers,
soldiers here, a doctor there,
and farmers, farmers everywhere,
a rascal and (the oddest thing)
a concubine of England’s king,
passing on through progeny
the mixed-up genes that make up me.
From ancient time, from foreign place,
I got these eyes, this nose, this face.
The slender fingers of my hand
once toiled in soil of distant land.

My ancestors who trod this earth
in all the years before my birth
could not have known I’d ever be,
and yet they are a part of me.
As I do now, they lived and breathed
and bits of themselves they bequeathed,
so here I stand to honor them,
to think of her, remember him,
to thank them now with all my heart
for each and every body part.
Though they’ve all died and gone away,
I carry on their DNA.

Comfortable Genes

In the last days of 1988, shortly after my grandmother died, I went with my mother to sort through Mammaw’s things. Among them was a letter from her brother, Loren, in which he had detailed what he knew about their family history. Up until then I hadn't had any questions about our ancestors, but I suddenly realized that I'd better start thinking up some questions and asking them whle there was still someone alive who knew the answers. From that day forward I’ve been on a quest to expand Uncle Loren’s list. With the aid of a few interested relatives and the wonderful resources of Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker, I’ve spent 17 years fitting together pieces of this family puzzle.


Genealogy is one of those things that people are either interested in or they’re not, and I try not to put anybody to sleep with facts about who begat whom. But when they want to know, I’m ready for ‘em. I’ll tell them that we share ancestors with the Roosevelts of New York and Washington, and with the Fondas of Hollywood. I’ll tell them that Mary Boleyn, sister of beheaded Anne, was our 15th great-grandmother and had her own hanky-panky with King Henry VIII. We'll talk about those famous names first, and then we'll talk about the hundreds of other ancestors who were average, hard-working people, just like us. We’ll look at old photos together and try to determine which of those facial features we can see in our loved ones, and we’ll follow the trail of red hair that skips and jumps through our extended family.

I’ve loved every minute of poring over census records and online family trees, putting names (putting real people, actually) into a database where, with a few keystrokes, I can take them out and spend time with them for a while. There aren’t a lot of leaves left unturned on this family tree, so the research isn't occupying much of my time these days. Still, I think often about all those people who came before me and about the circumstances and coincidences that ultimately led to my existence in this time and place.

Note: The people in the picture above are my great-grandparents. This was their wedding picture, made in 1895.

Here's a hint: It's your birthday!!

Tomorrow is my younger daughter's birthday. She's as sweet a person as you'll ever hope to meet, and I feel soooo lucky to have her in my life.

Here's just one example of the way she's always been able to make me laugh:

When my two girls were five and three, my mother took them shopping to buy me a gift. I got home from work that day and found them so excited they were about to burst. As if to convince themselves, they kept repeating that they couldn't tell me what was in the package, that I'd just have to wait until the next day to open it. And then there was this:

5-year-old: "I'm gonna give you one hint: It's something for your office."

Me: "Ooooh, goooood, now don't tell me anything else, 'cause I want to be surprised."

3-year-old (dancing around in a frenzy): "Well, she got to give you one hint, so I'm gonna give you one hint, too: When you look at it, you're gonna know what time it is."

Happy birthday, Sweetheart. I love you sooooo much!

Sunday Morning Coming Up

There was a time when my Sundays were sad and lonely. A time when I needed the hustle and bustle of work to keep my mind off the fact that there was no special man in my life and I didn't know how to cope with that unfamiliar emptiness. A time when Kris Kristofferson spoke to me when he sang this verse of "Sunday Morning Coming Down":

In the park I saw a daddy,
With a laughin' little girl who he was swingin'.
And I stopped beside a Sunday school,
And listened to the song they were singin'.
Then I headed back for home,
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin'.
And it echoed through the canyons,
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.

I'm glad to say those days are long gone. Sundays are special to me now, set aside for the solitude and serenity in which I can nourish my spirit and soak up enough peace of mind to last through the coming week.

I seldom leave home on Sundays. If I do, it's to go somewhere or to some event that will enrich my life, not to shop for soup or laundry detergent. This is the day when I'm most likely to spend time on the phone with someone I miss or pursue a project that stimulates my creativity. The only household chores I'll do on Sunday are those that are satisfying to put behind me; otherwise, the tasks can wait.

On Sundays I have time to think and to feel, to think about how lucky I am to have people in my life whom I love so much, to feel the joy that my pets pump deep into my heart, to bask in the beauty that's been there all along.

Shout "Hallelujah!"

I'm one of the many people who think of themselves as spiritual rather than religious. It's been a long, long time since I've been to church, unless you count weddings, but last night I dreamed about it. In the dream, a friend and I went for the first time to one of those huge mega-churches that are popping up all over. Not the decorous sanctuaries I experienced in the Baptist church of my youth, the Methodist church of my teens, or the oh-so-sophisticated Unitarian Universalist church I attended for a while as an adult. This was the kind of church I see on TV, where the music is lively and the people are standing on their feet, waving their open hands in the air, faces raised up to the Heavens. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Since my dream-friend and I had never attended that kind of church before, we agreed before going inside that we'd just watch the other people and try to blend in--sit when they sat, stand when they stood, etc. It seemed like a good plan, but it started unraveling almost immediately. First of all, we got separated because of the large crowd. I ended up sitting in a section of pews that were placed at an angle to those where my friend sat. From my position I could clearly see her in her front-row seat.

Another person also caught my interest. Standing on the floor in front of the stage and a short distance away from the preacher, there was a lady who was using American Sign Language to interpret the service for a group of deaf people. The deaf people, coincidentally, were in the first few rows near my friend. As the choir sang, the deaf people signed along with the interpretor, "singing" the lyrics, and when the hymn ended, they all quieted their hands and watched the interpretor as she translated what was being said.

The sermon began. I listened to the preacher, but I watched the congregation. I got busy sitting, standing and waving as the others did, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something I couldn't quite wrap my brain around. My friend, it seemed, had chosen the interpretor as her model for how to behave in this church. I watched in disbelief as my friend mimicked the sign language motions, moving her hands and fingers, touching her face or her chest, exactly in sync with the interpretor. It was actually quite fascinating.

I didn't want my friend to embarrass herself, so I focused all my energy on her, willing her to look in my direction. When she finally did, I began mimicking the sign language motions, too, accompanying them with a frown and a side-to-side shake of my head. My friend didn't understand that I was signaling her to stop. Instead, my fake-signing seemed to offer her affirmation, so she gave me a big smile and continued even more vigorously. "No sweat," her smile seemed to say. "I'm down with this."

And then I noticed that a couple of the hands-high-in-the-air people were looking back and forth between my friend and me, both of us doing sign language now, and one by one they began joining in. Like a wave at a baseball game, the sign language movement grew from the front of the church to the very last row in the back. The pastor, caught up in the fervor of his own voice, didn't seem to notice. Nor did the interpretor.

As the choir began to sing again, this time a rousing gospel number, the interpretor started swaying to the music while she signed the lyrics, which started my friend and all the deaf people swaying and signing, and then the entire congregation began swaying and signing like crazy, all in unison--all except me. I had stopped by that time and was just standing there, watching all those people dressed up in their Sunday best, joyous expressions on their faces, looking to me like spaced-out, signing line dancers.

The dream ended then, at the point where I was feeling alone in the crowd and wondering (not for the first time in my life) why I was the only one who seemed to think there was a problem with everyone just goin' with the flow.

Stop me before I ruin this

Since the beginning of the week, I've been totally at war with all things technical and/or mechanical. I noticed on Monday--the first day warm enough to turn on the air conditioner--that the A/C didn't seem to be cooling properly. I tested various settings, checked the breakers, etc., and blew it off because I didn't want to think about it that day. At night I kept cool (and a little moist) with the fan on.

On Wednesday, my first workday of the week, I discovered that my cell phone had died. I put it on the charger overnight and still, nothing. Nada. Zip.

So, yesterday I faced reality. I called to arrange for a new cell phone, which should arrive in a day or two, and I called the A/C repairman and asked him to come out today when my daughter could be here to let him in.

This morning, my new toilet started leaking...just a drop every five seconds or so. My son-in-law had told me when he installed it that it might start to leak and that he would come and adjust the bolts if it did. I noticed the leak just as I was leaving for work, so I wrapped a towel around the base of the john and called that good enough for the time being.

This afternoon my daughter called me at work to say that the A/C man wanted to speak to me. He began with the dreaded "I'm afraid I have some bad news," and then talked until he reached $2,090.

Right after I hung up the phone, I realized that my son-in-law would be on his way home from work, so I called to tell him about the toilet leak. After that I started telling him about the call from the A/C man and, for some stupid reason, I began to cry about it. It took me a minute to get a grip and terminate my pity-party, and then I apologized to him for getting all weak and weepy. I said, "It's just so frustrating that all these things are breaking at one time. I'm afraid to go home and touch my computer." He suggested that I might not want to watch TV, either. He said, "Why don't you just read the newspaper; I don't think you can do anything to that."

So, I made it home safely (without car trouble), and I started thinking on the bright side of things, like how my loved ones are all well, and how I'm glad I bought the camera when I did, because if I had waited until the A/C broke, I wouldn't want to spend the money on the camera. You know the kind of thoughts I mean, all the positive, Pollyanna-ish things you tell yourself when everything is going wrong and you want to boost your spirwhextyhgbujiokm ,.[plokmutghvbkj., tyuhn l., pojhbg nm,.mnghn m, quhbmnc

If you've never seen a bunny in a cloud, you might as well not read this.

I’ve recently had a brief online discussion with a friend about all the considerations involved in selecting new flooring. It’s hard to make a choice. Flooring is a major investment, after all, and with so many options available, it would be easy to pick the wrong one. Add a couple of big, hairy dogs to the mix and the difficulty increases exponentially.

When the old carpet in my living room died (a long, slow asphyxiation by dog hair and other flotsam and jetsam), I learned that choosing a replacement floor that looked beautiful wasn’t nearly as important as choosing one that was dog-friendly and would make my life easier. I was open to a variety of flooring materials, but there was one deal-breaker: It had to be the color of dirt.



After months of looking at flooring samples, I finally chose the floor you see in these photos, and I’m really happy with it. Yes, it’s easy to clean. No, it isn’t too slippery. And there’s another positively delightful bonus: Hidden in the dark spots and whorls of the flooring pattern are dozens of little animal faces that pop out at me as I walk through the house and make me smile every single day. How would anybody ever know to shop for that?!



Can you see the droopy-eyed pup in this tile?

Misty March morning in my backyard

Because I was off work Monday and Tuesday for the Mardi Gras holiday, all the usual Monday madness took place on Wednesday this week. After a chaotic day, a non-nutritious-but-delicious supper of chips and Rotel cheese dip, and a couple of hours of compulsory TV (American Idol and a Barbara Walters special), I'm in a near-zombie state and headed for bed. But if it was a generally unproductive and unspectacular day, I'll take responsibility for it. The day itself started out with the potential to be glorious.